


Reminiscing

by iceblink



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017), The Worst Witch - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Reconciliation, gay witches in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 03:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11820645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceblink/pseuds/iceblink
Summary: Hecate and Pippa share memories of their friendship, and exactly why it ended. Could it be that they haven't missed their chance after all?





	Reminiscing

**Author's Note:**

> So, I watched the 2017 'Worst Witch,' fondly remembering Kate Duchêne and childhood memories of a crush on Miss Hardbroom. It seems that fifteen years on it seems I've still got a distinct taste for repressed gay witch teachers who dress like a dominatrix. Anyway, here's some cuteness between Hecate and Pippa as they look back at their school days.

“Do you remember the day we first met, Hecate?” Pippa questions, sipping her tea and looking wistful. She’d been fifteen and new to the school, and Miss Toadstool had ushered her over to a cauldron next to a tall, intense-looking girl who appeared distinctly displeased to see her.

“I do,” Hecate drawls, smirking slightly. “I seem to remember you were sporting a rather questionable pink unicorn bound into your braid.”

“Ah yes, I remember you looking at it with barely concealed contempt,” Pippa smiles, and they’re both looking softly at one another. And gosh, after all these years she still feels it, that connection, when Hecate looks at her. “I think of it often, that day” she continues, sipping her tea and looking wistful. “That look you had when I walked in, all barely suppressed contempt and thirst for knowledge, sat on your own right at the front. You fascinated me, somehow, and I don’t know - all I wanted to do was to make you smile.”

“Wh-what?” Hecate stutters, carefully setting her tea down on the table lest she spill it. Pippa suspects she’s being more open than Hecate is comfortable with, but she knows if she wants to understand what happened, it’s her who’ll need to push the other woman.

“I’d never met anyone like you before, not really,” Pippa smiles, and the look in her eye is so honest, so open, that Hecate dares not meet it. “Anyway,” Pippa continues as Hecate picks at her nails, offering her an opening. “What did you really think of me, when I swanned in to your potions lesson?”

“Well,” Hecate says, the glimmer of a smile on her lips as she gingerly picks up her tea. “At first, I was rather put out to have been given a cauldron partner at all- especially a perky, blonde one with sparkly lip gloss and hideously cutesy accessories. But, it is fair to say, you were not at all what I expected.”

Pippa smiles mischievously, taking a slow bite of the iced donut that was in her hand - Hecate, she had been pleased to note, had evidently remembered her fondness for them. “Well, Hiccup, after years of unrivalled dominance, I think you enjoyed having some competition.” She remembers well the look on Hecate’s face when, after having evidently concluded that Pippa was a vacuous airhead, she topped the class on the first potions test of the term.

“Nobody had ever beaten me before,” Hecate drawls, and Pippa notes with a spark of affection that she still seems a little put out by the defeat. “Of course, I still maintain that Miss Toadstool was entirely incorrect not to award me the last mark for flatworm’s blood. It’s a perfectly valid alternative to crushed millipede in a blood congealing spell.”

“Of course,” Pippa smirks, and as she catches Hecate’s eye, she sees that she too is struggling to suppress a grin.

“But really, to have someone around who loved magic as much as I did, who really wanted to be a witch, to have a challenge, to have _you_ , Pipsqueak - it was…..” She trails off and looks away, but Pippa is unfazed; she knows now what she’d always known, even as a young girl, that Hecate’s wit and bite are a cover for the intense feelings that she struggles to communicate.

“It was wonderful,” Pippa smiles, thinking of the times they’d had together. After a rocky start, they’d quickly become inseparable, been so wrapped up in one another and in their friendship that there’d barely been room for anyone else in their little universe of two, however much the other girls tried to interest Pippa in their gossip and in the latest records of The Cauldron Crew. Pippa had persuaded Hecate to relax her tight control and play a little more fast and loose with the rules, and they’d got up to all sorts of fun, surreptitiously brewing advanced potions and using their considerable talents in sorcery to sneak out of school at night and pursue adventure.

“Do you remember the time we tried to transfigure ourselves into birds?” Pippa smiled. It had gone rather wrong, and Pippa, rather than being a magnificent peacock, had ended up flapping around the sky as a blue tit, much to Hecate - who was a stately raven -’s endless amusement.

“I remember it all, _Pipsqueak_ ,” Hecate smiles pointedly, for she’d bestowed the nickname on Pippa after that incident. “Especially the nights we went flying on our brooms. How we used to chase the sunset down into the Atlantic Ocean, and how we’d lie on St Kilda with the birds and gaze at the stars. I don’t think -,” and Pippa can see that her friend is struggling not to cry. “I don’t think I ever felt so free as I did on those nights.”

Nor had she, Pippa thought, as she remembered soaring through the air, remembered Hecate’s magnificent hair sweeping behind her, remembered how’d they’d used to lie, breathless, on the rocky outcrop, making up new names for the constellations. And, thinking back, she still doesn’t understand, doesn’t know how Hecate could ever have been convinced that Pippa was better without her, that she would really have wanted the superficial chatter of the other girls over everything they’d shared. She needs to know.

“Why, Hiccup?” she demands, putting Hecate on the spot. “After everything we were to each other, how could you ever think I wouldn’t want to be your friend?” Hecate swallows, and Pippa can see her fear in her eyes, see her struggling with how to word it.

“The girls,” Hecate says, finally. “Caro and Florence and Edith. I heard them, before the broomstick competition, talking about us in the bathroom. They - they couldn’t understand why on earth you were friends with me, they thought I must have cast some kind of spell on you. They wanted to set you up with Caro’s cousin so that - so that I’d see that…that you’d never…” She’s looking down, but Pippa waits, not sure if she was going to continue. Hecate breathes, and eventually whispers, stuttering “I thought - I thought I’d made a terrible fool of myself.”

“Oh Hiccup,” Pippa says, now finally understanding, and she rises from her chair to envelop her friend in a tight hug. She smells the same, that dark perfume mixed with a faint scent of plants from her potions work, and Pippa closes her arms tightly around Hecate’s back. It’s definitely still there, she thinks, all that had once been between them, in that feeling of wanting to cling and not let go, that slight dizziness at their closeness, that feeling that somehow they _fit_. Pippa knows that, even after nearly thirty years, she has to at least try.

“I was in love with you,” she says simply, and she feels Hecate stiffen in her arms, although she doesn’t pull away, doesn’t bolt like Pippa fears she will.

“W-what?” Hecate finally whispers, and Pippa braces herself. She’s started, and she has to continue. “I didn’t understand it like that, not then,” she says softly, feeling the sobs well in her eyes. “We were young, and it wasn’t talked about in those days, but-“ and now she’s crying to get the words out. “But later, I understood what it was I’d felt. And why it had hurt me so much, when you stopped talking to me.”

At that, Hecate melts, folding her body tightly around Pippa’s as if she were trying to meld them together. They’re both crying now, and Pippa hears the wordless apology in the hands that are stroking tenderly down her back. She’s not sure how long they stand there, clinging to one another, but neither of them move to let go.

Eventually, Hecate finds her words. “I was in love - I was in love with you too. And I didn’t understand what I was feeling, not really, but when I heard the girls laughing, I knew they were right. And I thought there was something wrong with me, and I was so _humiliated_ \- I thought that if you knew, you’d never-“

“So you stopped speaking to me, and then ran off to the Ice Wastes to apprentice yourself to the Taiga Witches?” Pippa smiles through her tears, because of course she did.

“Well, I never claimed that dealing with emotions was one of my strong suits,” Hecate quips, and Pippa can feel the smile in her words. Gosh, she still feels it, still feels everything about Hecate, and she dares to hope that maybe, just maybe…

“Well goodness, weren’t we both just silly?” Pippa says, and she pulls back a little from their hug, cupping Hecate’s face in hers before staring into deep brown eyes. “I hate to think of all that time we missed, Hiccup. And I know a lot of time has passed, but perhaps - if you want to - perhaps it’s not too late for us to try…”

Hecate’s face is somewhere between hope and terror, but she leans into Pippa’s hand, almost as if she can’t help herself. Once again, though, she doesn’t bolt. “You would want to? I should warn you, Pippa - I’m not the easiest person. I’m not sure I know how to-”

And before Hecate can reason herself out of it, Pippa presses her lips gently to hers, feels Hecate’s slight gasp as she traces the other woman’s lips with her tongue. And, slowly, Pippa feels Hecate’s hands slide around her waist, feels Hecate’s mouth open, and knows she has her answer.


End file.
